Costco Is Building a Giant Poultry Network to Produce $5 Rotisserie Chickens

Why Costco is getting in the poultry-production business

Bulk-grocery giant Costco wants to put a $5 rotisserie chicken in every pot, so it is building a huge processing plant in Nebraska and linking up with hundreds of new farms to produce the discount poultry. This facility will compete with the likes of Tyson and Perdue, the biggest producers in America’s chicken game, and, according to NPR, will process more than two million chickens per week once it’s up and running. Costco reportedly sells about 60 million rotisserie chickens every year. In addition to cutting supply costs for the company, this move will help Costco keep rotisserie birds in stock, as other chicken producers are now focusing more on larger specimens that aren’t meant to be sold whole.

Dunkin’ targets Starbucks with discount espresso

Dunkin’ (née Dunkin’ Donuts) thinks it has found a way to compete with Starbucks: just undercut the Seattle-based coffee chain’s prices. The Boston-based company is introducing new espresso beverages that are $0.50 to $0.60 cheaper than those found at the ‘Bucks, reports the Wall Street Journal. Dunkin’ will hope these cheaper drinks will continue to build momentum against Starbucks in the battle for caffeine addicts everywhere.

Cheap booze sparks an Applebee’s comeback

Despite some belief that millennials were turning away from alcohol, sit-down chain Applebee’s just had its best sales quarter in more than a decade, and it’s apparently due to cheap booze. The company’s year-over-year sales figures jumped 7.7 percent last quarter. Restaurant Business Online notes: “Key parts of the effort have included a resurrection of such onetime signature products as riblets, Applebee’s unique version of ribs, and dollar cocktails such as the strawberry dollarita.”

And in other food news ...

• Sorry, kids, McDonald’s has removed happy meals from its value menu, reports QSR Magazine. The meals had been available for $3.
• Architectural Digest finds design inspiration in Taco Bell interiors from the 1990s.
• Elsewhere in the Taco Bell universe, the chain is set to give away free Doritos locos tacos because a baseball player stole a base during a baseball game Tuesday night. The freebies — just one per customer — will be available Thursday, November 1, from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., per SB Nation.
• A restaurant pop-up in Japan is serving a menu of dishes that were once requested as last meals by real death-row inmates, according to Spoon & Tamago. How charming.
• Restaurant and grocery delivery continues to be the trend du jour for big-money investors. Venture capitalists have plunged $3.5 billion into these sorts of companies in 2018, reports the Wall Street Journal.
• Finally, here is a Late Late Show sketch in which mean chef Gordon Ramsay achieves a zen state, only to be revived as his normal shouty chef by host James Cordon.